Among the prime planners of a $100 million Islamic center and mosque near Ground Zero, it's not just Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf who is visiting the Middle East this summer at U.S. taxpayer expense. The State Department is also about to send Rauf's wife and Cordoba Initiative fellow director, Daisy Khan, on her own taxpayer-funded "public diplomacy" trip to the United Arab Emirates. Khan is scheduled to visit the UAE from Aug. 29 to Sept. 2, overlapping there with Rauf, for whom it will be the final leg of a three-country trip including Bahrain and Qatar.
The U.S. Embassy in the UAE capital of Abu Dhabi has posted on its website an announcement of the impending visit by this husband-wife team. Rauf and Khan will be there, the announcement says, "to engage foreign audiences and build people-to-people ties" and to "discuss their experiences as Muslims living and working in the United States."
What might their discussions entail? Rauf, since his Cordoba Initiative's Ground Zero mosque project triggered a national uproar, has spent the summer as an enigma. Before embarking on his State-sponsored tour, he walled himself off for weeks in Malaysia, where he has longstanding ties and keeps an office. His Cordoba website now features a note that Rauf could not be available (apparently not even by phone) to explain himself to the people of New York because "he travels the world in his life-long endeavor to bring the message of moderation, peace and understanding to both Western and Islamic countries."
In Rauf's absence, Daisy Khan has been speaking prolifically from New York about the Cordoba House mega-mosque project (which the developer recently re-dubbed Park 51, and the Cordoba House is now describing as a "community center"). Her message, like the name of the project, has been morphing at speed. When Rauf and Khan won approval for their 15-story mosque-topped Cordoba House from a Manhattan community board this spring, they advertised their project as all about doing their part for harmony and healing near the site of the Sept. 11 attacks.
When it turned out that a majority of New Yorkers, and Americans generally, think this project is more like rubbing salt in a wound, Khan shifted focus. She's now talking about the Cordoba project as a test of American religious tolerance. If a majority of Americans--cognizant that the Sept. 11 attacks were carried out by Muslims, in the name of Islam--think it's inappropriate to stage that test near the edge of Ground Zero, Khan's retort is that they must be bigots. In an interview last week with the Washington Post's Sally Quinn, she lamented: "When will Muslims be accepted as plain old Americans?"
On Sunday, interviewed on ABC TV's This Week by Christiane Amanpour, Khan ratcheted up her complaints. Amanpour asked, "Is America Islamophobic?"
Khan replied, "It's not even Islamophobia, it's beyond Islamophobia. It's hate of Muslims."
Showing posts with label Cordoba Initiative. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cordoba Initiative. Show all posts
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Friday, August 27, 2010
Muslim Brotherhood looms larger in Ground Zero mosque
Islamofascism: New dots are emerging from the probe into who's behind the Ground Zero mosque, and the radical Muslim Brotherhood is coming into view.
While a couple of U.S. nonprofits — the Cordoba Initiative and its sister, the American Society for Muslim Advancement — are coordinating the New York project, they hardly give the full picture. A Saudi charity has sunk more than $300,000 into ASMA. It's called the Kingdom Foundation — headed by Alwaleed bin Talal, the Saudi prince whose 9/11 relief check was rejected after he blamed the attacks on U.S. foreign policy.
Bin Talal is a major financier of Muslim Brotherhood fronts in the U.S. His foundation is run by Saudi hijabi Muna Abu Sulayman, who appears on ASMA's Web site as one of its "Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow."
"Her work," according to her official bio, "focuses on increasing understanding between Islam and the West through establishment of academic centers and programs, both in the Middle East and the United States."
Sulayman, who spends much of her time in the U.S., happens to be the daughter of Dr. AbdulHamid Abu Sulayman, "one of the most important figures in the history of the global Muslim Brotherhood," according to the Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report.
So? The Egypt-based Brotherhood is the parent of Hamas and al-Qaida and the source of most of the jihadi ideology and related terror throughout the world today. Citing its secret U.S. archives, prosecutors say the Brotherhood has a plan to "destroy" America "from within," and is using its agents and front groups in the U.S. to carry out that strategy. Like the mafia, it's highly organized, and uses shells and cutouts to launder money.
Dr. Sulayman's U.S. offices were raided by the feds after 9/11 on suspicion of providing material support to terror groups. An unsealed federal search warrant lists him as chairman and president of the International Institute of Islamic Thought, or IIIT, the Brotherhood's U.S. think tank.
In December 2008, IIIT hosted Ground Zero mosque imam Feisal Rauf to discuss his Shariah Index Project, which will be housed in the planned 15-story structure. The index will formally rate which governments best follow Islamic law, as practiced by Saudi.
While a couple of U.S. nonprofits — the Cordoba Initiative and its sister, the American Society for Muslim Advancement — are coordinating the New York project, they hardly give the full picture. A Saudi charity has sunk more than $300,000 into ASMA. It's called the Kingdom Foundation — headed by Alwaleed bin Talal, the Saudi prince whose 9/11 relief check was rejected after he blamed the attacks on U.S. foreign policy.
Bin Talal is a major financier of Muslim Brotherhood fronts in the U.S. His foundation is run by Saudi hijabi Muna Abu Sulayman, who appears on ASMA's Web site as one of its "Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow."
"Her work," according to her official bio, "focuses on increasing understanding between Islam and the West through establishment of academic centers and programs, both in the Middle East and the United States."
Sulayman, who spends much of her time in the U.S., happens to be the daughter of Dr. AbdulHamid Abu Sulayman, "one of the most important figures in the history of the global Muslim Brotherhood," according to the Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report.
So? The Egypt-based Brotherhood is the parent of Hamas and al-Qaida and the source of most of the jihadi ideology and related terror throughout the world today. Citing its secret U.S. archives, prosecutors say the Brotherhood has a plan to "destroy" America "from within," and is using its agents and front groups in the U.S. to carry out that strategy. Like the mafia, it's highly organized, and uses shells and cutouts to launder money.
Dr. Sulayman's U.S. offices were raided by the feds after 9/11 on suspicion of providing material support to terror groups. An unsealed federal search warrant lists him as chairman and president of the International Institute of Islamic Thought, or IIIT, the Brotherhood's U.S. think tank.
In December 2008, IIIT hosted Ground Zero mosque imam Feisal Rauf to discuss his Shariah Index Project, which will be housed in the planned 15-story structure. The index will formally rate which governments best follow Islamic law, as practiced by Saudi.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
By endorsing Ground Zero mosque, Obama stands with shariah
At a White House celebration of Ramadan tonight in the company of representatives of several of the Nation’s most prominent Muslim Brotherhood front organizations, President Obama announced his strong support for one of their most immediate objectives: the construction of a mega-mosque and “cultural center” at Ground Zero. In so doing, he publicly embraced the greatest tar-baby of his presidency.
In the process, Mr. Obama also inadvertently served up what he likes to call a “teachable moment” concerning the nature of the enemy we are confronting, and the extent to which it is succeeding in the Brotherhood’s stated mission: “…Eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”
As the AP reported, “President Barack Obama on Friday forcefully endorsed building a mosque near Ground Zero saying the country’s founding principles demanded no less. ‘As a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country,’ Obama said, weighing in for the first time on a controversy that has riven New York and the nation. ‘That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances. This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable.’
“Our capacity to show not merely tolerance, but respect to those who are different from us—a way of life that stands in stark contrast to the nihilism of those who attacked us on that September morning, and who continue to plot against us today.”
So much for the pretense that, as White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs had previously declared, the President would not get involved because the Ground Zero mosque (GZM) controversy was “a local matter.” (As opposed, say, to the arrest of a Harvard professor on disorderly conduct charges.)
Gone too is the option of continuing to conceal an extraordinary fact: the Obama administration is endorsing not only this “local matter,” but explicitly endorsing the agenda of the imam behind it – Feisal Abdul Rauf. Rauf is the Muslim Brother, who together with his wife Daisy Khan (a.k.a. Daisy Kahn for tax purposes, at least) runs the tellingly named “Cordoba Initiative.” He is believed to be on a taxpayer-underwritten junket and/or fund-raising tour of the Middle East, courtesy of the State Department, which insists that he is a “moderate” in the face of abundant evidence to the contrary. Interestingly, the President’s rhetoric – like that of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other apologists for and boosters of the GZM – tracks perfectly with the Muslim Brotherhood line about why we need to allow what Lieutenant General William “Jerry” Boykin has correctly described as an “Islamist victory arch” close by some of America’s most hallowed ground. It is, we are told, all about “religious freedom” and “tolerance.”
Actually, it is all about submission to shariah – arguably the most intolerant of theo-political-legal codes, ironically particularly when it comes to respect for freedom of religion. Rauf’s mosque complex and the shariah ideology/doctrine that animates it – the same program that animated the jihadists who destroyed the World Trade Center and many of its occupants on 9/11 – has everything to do with power, not faith.
As notable as what the President said is the company he keeps. Consider a few examples from this year’s Iftar dinner guest list:
Ingrid Mattson heads the largest Muslim Brotherhood front in the country, the Islamic Society of North America. ISNA was an unindicted co-conspirator in the biggest terrorism financing trial in the nation’s history and was identified as a Brotherhood “associated or friendly” group in documents introduced as evidence uncontested in that Holy Land Foundation prosecution. Ms. Mattson now presides over the selection, training and certification of Muslim chaplains for the U.S. military and prison system – interestingly, a job formerly in the hands of Muslim Brother Abdurahman Alamoudi, the founder and first head of the American Muslim Council, who is currently serving a 23-year sentence on terrorism charges.
Salam Al-Marayati is president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC). In 1999, then-House Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt withdrew his nomination of Al-Marayati to a leadership position on the National Commission on Terrorism when it became public that Al-Marayati claimed that the terrorist group, Hezbollah, was a legitimate organization and has the right to attack the Israeli Army.
Dalia Mogahed runs the insidious Gallup Center for Muslim Studies and advises President Obama on Muslim affairs as a member of the President’s Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. In an October 2009 interview with the London Telegraph, she made the following astounding assertions: “I think the reason so many women support shariah is because they have a very different understanding of shariah than the common perception in Western media.” “The majority of women around the world associate gender justice, or justice for women, with shariah compliance.” “The portrayal of shariah has been oversimplified in many cases.”
The most prominent American public figure to directly challenge such pap is former House Speaker Newt Gingrich who, in remarks before the American Enterprise Institute last month, declared, “Stealth jihadis use political, cultural, societal, religious, intellectual tools; violent jihadis use violence. But in fact they’re both engaged in jihad and they’re both seeking to impose the same end state which is to replace Western civilization with a radical imposition of shariah.”
In a brilliant appreciation of Mr. Gingrich’s address, Andrew McCarthy, an accomplished former federal prosecutor (he put away the ringleader of the first effort to destroy the World Trade Center, “the Blind Sheikh,” OmarAbdel-Rahman) and author of the superb New York Times bestseller, The Grand Jihad , wrote in National Review Online: “Henceforth, there should be no place to hide for any candidate, including any incumbent. The question will be: Where do you stand on shariah?”
For Barack Obama, the answer is now pretty clear: He stands with shariah.
In the process, Mr. Obama also inadvertently served up what he likes to call a “teachable moment” concerning the nature of the enemy we are confronting, and the extent to which it is succeeding in the Brotherhood’s stated mission: “…Eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”
As the AP reported, “President Barack Obama on Friday forcefully endorsed building a mosque near Ground Zero saying the country’s founding principles demanded no less. ‘As a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country,’ Obama said, weighing in for the first time on a controversy that has riven New York and the nation. ‘That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances. This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable.’
“Our capacity to show not merely tolerance, but respect to those who are different from us—a way of life that stands in stark contrast to the nihilism of those who attacked us on that September morning, and who continue to plot against us today.”
So much for the pretense that, as White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs had previously declared, the President would not get involved because the Ground Zero mosque (GZM) controversy was “a local matter.” (As opposed, say, to the arrest of a Harvard professor on disorderly conduct charges.)
Gone too is the option of continuing to conceal an extraordinary fact: the Obama administration is endorsing not only this “local matter,” but explicitly endorsing the agenda of the imam behind it – Feisal Abdul Rauf. Rauf is the Muslim Brother, who together with his wife Daisy Khan (a.k.a. Daisy Kahn for tax purposes, at least) runs the tellingly named “Cordoba Initiative.” He is believed to be on a taxpayer-underwritten junket and/or fund-raising tour of the Middle East, courtesy of the State Department, which insists that he is a “moderate” in the face of abundant evidence to the contrary. Interestingly, the President’s rhetoric – like that of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other apologists for and boosters of the GZM – tracks perfectly with the Muslim Brotherhood line about why we need to allow what Lieutenant General William “Jerry” Boykin has correctly described as an “Islamist victory arch” close by some of America’s most hallowed ground. It is, we are told, all about “religious freedom” and “tolerance.”
Actually, it is all about submission to shariah – arguably the most intolerant of theo-political-legal codes, ironically particularly when it comes to respect for freedom of religion. Rauf’s mosque complex and the shariah ideology/doctrine that animates it – the same program that animated the jihadists who destroyed the World Trade Center and many of its occupants on 9/11 – has everything to do with power, not faith.
As notable as what the President said is the company he keeps. Consider a few examples from this year’s Iftar dinner guest list:
Ingrid Mattson heads the largest Muslim Brotherhood front in the country, the Islamic Society of North America. ISNA was an unindicted co-conspirator in the biggest terrorism financing trial in the nation’s history and was identified as a Brotherhood “associated or friendly” group in documents introduced as evidence uncontested in that Holy Land Foundation prosecution. Ms. Mattson now presides over the selection, training and certification of Muslim chaplains for the U.S. military and prison system – interestingly, a job formerly in the hands of Muslim Brother Abdurahman Alamoudi, the founder and first head of the American Muslim Council, who is currently serving a 23-year sentence on terrorism charges.
Salam Al-Marayati is president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC). In 1999, then-House Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt withdrew his nomination of Al-Marayati to a leadership position on the National Commission on Terrorism when it became public that Al-Marayati claimed that the terrorist group, Hezbollah, was a legitimate organization and has the right to attack the Israeli Army.
Dalia Mogahed runs the insidious Gallup Center for Muslim Studies and advises President Obama on Muslim affairs as a member of the President’s Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. In an October 2009 interview with the London Telegraph, she made the following astounding assertions: “I think the reason so many women support shariah is because they have a very different understanding of shariah than the common perception in Western media.” “The majority of women around the world associate gender justice, or justice for women, with shariah compliance.” “The portrayal of shariah has been oversimplified in many cases.”
The most prominent American public figure to directly challenge such pap is former House Speaker Newt Gingrich who, in remarks before the American Enterprise Institute last month, declared, “Stealth jihadis use political, cultural, societal, religious, intellectual tools; violent jihadis use violence. But in fact they’re both engaged in jihad and they’re both seeking to impose the same end state which is to replace Western civilization with a radical imposition of shariah.”
In a brilliant appreciation of Mr. Gingrich’s address, Andrew McCarthy, an accomplished former federal prosecutor (he put away the ringleader of the first effort to destroy the World Trade Center, “the Blind Sheikh,” OmarAbdel-Rahman) and author of the superb New York Times bestseller, The Grand Jihad , wrote in National Review Online: “Henceforth, there should be no place to hide for any candidate, including any incumbent. The question will be: Where do you stand on shariah?”
For Barack Obama, the answer is now pretty clear: He stands with shariah.
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